Saturday, October 07, 2006

As The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has delighted in pointing out, the people at Fox News are so committed to the ideological mythology that Republicans are the party of good upstanding family moral values, while the Democrats are licentious equivocators, that they couldn't process the cognitive dissonance that former U.S. Representative Mark Foley is a Republican that they displayed his name on their screens as "Mark Foley (D–FL)" Not only that, they apparently repeated the mistake for a second day, even after having the issue brought to their attention publicly.

Well, I was just reading a CNN.com news item entitled "GOP prods Democrats over Foley scandal," in which several Republicans voice their tinfoil-hatted theories about Democratic operatives sitting on the fact that the Republicans were sitting on their sicko Congressman so that the Democrats could use this Republican scandal to electoral advantage. Yawn. Thing is, it isn't just the crackpot theory that the Republicans are advancing, it's also the supposedly fair and balanced unbiased and "authoritative" coverage by CNN:

Top GOP leaders, including Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt, of Missouri, have rushed to Hastert's defense. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, wrote a letter supporting Hastert, saying it was inappropriate to ask for the speaker's resignation when similar scandals in the 1980s prompted a "dramatically different standard."

Barton was referring to Democratic Reps. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and Dan Crane of Illinois, both of whom were censured after having sexual relationships with 17-year-old pages. Crane lost his re-election bid, while Studds survived the scandal. — CNN.com article athttp://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/06/foley.fallout/index.html

Well, yes, except that Dan Crane was one of those Republican members of Congress. Oops; score a blooper for CNN.